Dr. Theres Rohde
Director at the Museum für Konkrete Kunst
Daniel Engelberg. Of “beautiful Art” and “Happy Pills”
Daniel Engelberg‘s Art is beautiful.
I know, in the art world it is rare that someone dares to express such a sentiment and
– even worse – to write it down. For then it is in the world, committed to paper and
cannot easily be taken back. That something is “beautiful“, doesn’t that sound much
too insignificant? Much too mundane? Much too indiscriminate? In the present time,
one gets the impression as if in the “beaux-arts“, the beautiful is almost frowned
upon, as if something that achieves its meaning via the aesthetic cannot be taken
seriously. It seems that you cannot do worse than to call something “beautiful“. Or
maybe you can? Perhaps with the following statement: Daniel Engelberg‘s Art makes
happy. At least me.
I am writing this article in November; a month not exactly known as a feel-good
period. The “golden autumn“, if there was one at all, is over and the “thousand lights“
of the pre-Christmas period are not yet installed in markets and living rooms.
Something else is needed to overcome the melancholy. Some take vitamin D tablets,
for me it is art that can keep the November blues away. Daniel Engelberg’s works
display their particular power. They are my “Happy Pills“ – and surprisingly, some of
the works, for example from the Sticks series, even look like it. “Happy Pills“, that
sounds like a drug. Well, why not? In the long run collectors will be able to confirm:
art can be addictive and can make one happy – even at the risk that it does not last
forever and, as with every other addiction, craves fresh supply.
It is remarkable that I of all people am reminded of something from the “real world“,
because my name is tied to an art which purposefully distances itself from that.
Something else would be expected from the director of the singular museum in
Germany which is devoted exclusively to Concrete Art and explicitly bears this focus
in its name. Doesn’t this art refuse to capture aspects of our daily life and give them
an image? Does it not intend to be only itself? Don’t its elements such as colours,
shapes, systems and structures exclusively stand for themselves and are thus
material and equally content of the works? That is what constitutes it and that is why
it is called Concrete Art, because everything we see is meant to be concrete and
separate. That is what the circle around Theo van Doesburg established
approximately 100 years ago and manifested in numerous writings.1 And here I
come, a century later, and write: Some of Daniel Engelberg‘s works remind me of
something. Yes, I dare do it. Because in my opinion, Concrete Art has evolved. It was
exactly the strict dogmatism of the early years that led to today’s artists no longer
feeling that they are part of Concrete Art, even though they work in accordance with
the principles of Concrete Art. 2 It is time to loosen the great stricture: in the art itself
and in what it was supposed to spark in the viewers. Thus I find that one may be
reminded of something, even if the artists had not intended it.
Another thought is central: I am convinced that the strictest Concrete Art, with all its
meticulousness, its system, its concept, fails if it does not beyond that manage to
have an impact. That is something Daniel Engelberg need not worry about. His works
have an impact. And that is primarily because he has mastered one of the rules of
Concrete Art: His works are terribly well made. Perfection, knowledge and the
reflection of what to do and how to do it, also separates the wheat from the chaff in
Concrete Art.
But what is it exactly that is so well made here? A profound look at the artist’s works
helps to understand it. Although “understand“ might be the wrong terminology. Does
an understanding exist in art at all?
Let’s be honest: if people try to understand something, they aim to differentiate and
classify things in categories. Daniel Engelberg does not humour that bias. His works
refuse to be categorized. What exactly are they? Painting? Sculpture? Actually it is
not easy to decide. They hover in between. What might help with attempting a
definition is a description of what one sees. In this catalogue we find images of the
1 The manifest of Concrete Art states: “We say: 1. Art is universal. 2. A work of art must be entirely
conceived and shaped by the mind before its execution. It shall not receive anything of
nature’s or sensuality’s or sentimentality’s formal data 3. The painting must be entirely built up
with purely plastic elements, namely surfaces and colours. A pictorial element does not have
any meaning beyond „itself“; as a consequence, a painting does not have any meaning other
than „itself“.
4. The construction of a painting, as well as that of its elements, must be simple and visually
controllable. 5. The painting technique must be mechanic, i.e., exact, anti-impressionistic. 6. An
effort toward absolute clarity is mandatory. “ Otto Carlsund, Theo van Doesburg, Jean Hélion,
Léon Tutundijan, Marcel Wantz, “Base de la peinture concrète“ (Basis of Concrete Painting), in:
Art Concret, 1, 1930, S. 1–4, cited and translated after
.: Charles Harrison, Paul Wood (ed.), Kunsttheorie im 20. Jahrhundert, vol. 1, 1895–1941, Ostfildern
1998, p. 441.
2 See the exhibition catalogue: Henrike Holsing, Mathias Listl, Theres Rohde (ed.), 24! Fragen an die
Konkrete Gegenwart, Berlin 2024.
work series Donuts, Sticks and Modul-Box. They all differ, yet are the same in one
aspect: They are constructed objects. With colour. And precisely because we cannot
categorize them, these works that hover somewhere between painting and sculpture,
they can be called border crossers. An attribution which also fits the artist. The study
of sculpture, the architectural thought process, the will to shape something – all of
that is evident in his works. At the same time he has developed an amazing
perfection in his handling of the element of colour, as it is usually only expected of
classic painters.
But isn’t it irrelevant, what he is? Does it have to be poured into a term? Does it make
any sense with the kind of art Daniel Engelberg creates? True, his works can be put
on the wall with a nail, “nailed down“ so to speak. But exactly there they seem to
develop an incomprehensible life and dynamic of their own. Those who strive to
understand them begin to scan them with their eyes. To this end they have to take up
different positions, to move. Observing people who are looking at works by Daniel
Engelberg – that is a spectacle of its own. For instance in front of a Modul-Box: They
wander first to the right, then again to the left, the stretch or bend down, they almost
try to crawl into the work with their gaze or even their body, to see where it leads. All
of this to get to the bottom of the construction of differently coloured wood boards
with various holes, and to be literally pulled into the work. This emerging desire to
explore what it is we see is one of the special allures of Engelberg’s works. However,
it does not result in disillusionment, but rather in a repeated surprise, depending on
where one is positioned. Again and again we catch ourselves being irritated by the
fact that the construction of the works is different from what we assumed at first
glance, or even more remarkable, from a photograph of one of his works. A relatively
graphic appearance as in the Sticks seems spatial from another perspective. A work
like the Donuts, which seems three-dimensional, is in its construction relatively flat.
Works of Op-Art cause similar perceptions, which refer equally to the objects as to
the viewers in front of them. Works by Jesús Rafael Soto, Ludwig Wilding, Carlos
Cruz-Diez are certainly different than those by Daniel Engelberg. What they have in
common is their spatial construction and the fact that they trigger one thing in the
viewer: movement. It is movement which causes the works to change before the
viewer’s eyes and thus to take effect. The individual varying position is important and
changes everything. For what is generally applicable to art – that two people looking
at a work never see the same image –, comes to a head in works by Soto, Wilding,
Cruz-Diez and thus by those of Engelberg: Not even one person always sees the
same image in one individual work of art.
Causing an effect – something that is central to art –, works of Op-Art usually
manage that only if they are as perfectly crafted as possible and this causality does
not change with Daniel Engelberg. The literal multilayered character of his works only
functions because of the artist’s detailed and thorough approach. For the Sticks, for
instance, black MDF boards are accurately mortised in a complex technical process,
the inner edges painted in neon colours; then epoxy resin is separately mixed with
colour and poured into each shape; every one separate and without colour change;
bubbles are burned out with fire, resulting in a smooth surface; until over the course
of hours the colours harden one after the other, approximately then hours per colour;
until that work is finished. That takes time.
For this variation of modern intarsia every single step is vital and every single step
needs Daniel Engelberg, who, as a “border crosser“ does not merely rely on
machines. Concrete Artists often work with strict principles. What they are and how
they apply them often differs greatly. Engelberg, for instance, refrains from relying
solely on technical production. He lends his hand to most of the steps and thus
allows the manual work a greater share than other Concrete Artists would. He
incorporates material which is known not so much from art supply shops, but rather
from hardware stores. But there he is not a craftsman or a hobbyist; he is an absolute
professional of his métier. Over the past years, Daniel Engelberg had to hone himself
and his technique to overcome an inner conflict: to work like a craftsman without the
result appearing like it was crafted. His art should be created as perfectly as though it
had been executed by a machine. This requirement, of himself and of the results, is
extremely high, not least because he deliberately creates each work as a unique
piece and never as an edition.
That is strenuous, hard, and requires a great deal of discipline, time and endurance.
Art demands much of the people who create it, as it does from Daniel Engelberg. The
Donuts, the Sticks in their pastel levity and flawlessness rarely reveal what path they
demand from the person who puts them into the world. As announced at the
beginning of the essay, art can make happy. The question is: who? And when? The
feeling of happiness it sparks in the viewer does not always unfold in the artists and
even if it does, not necessarily during the process of creation, but most often only
afterwards. Many experience that. Frequently they need their own “Happy Pills“,
figuratively and tragically often in the literal sense. The crux of happiness is that it
usually only reaches our awareness when we know it’s opposite. Artists know that.
Feelings of happiness surely exist in the creation of art, but what prevails are usually
doubts and the peril to break on one’s own requirements or the requirements to
create something unique. That is the “bitter pill“ people have to swallow when they
decide to become artists. And to stay with this image: coated tablets are probably
coated with sugar to cover up the unpleasant taste. But isn’t it often the mixture of
bitter and sweet which serves to create tension?
Art needs tension if it should not seem flat. Daniel Engelberg is aware of that. Pure
perfection brings the risk of appearing boring. Thus he confronts it with chaos.
Perfection, chaos – both require each other. That is why Daniel Engelberg
purposefully shows his different work series at the same time in his presentations: the
strictly constructed, well-thought-out Donuts opposite the playful Sticks. There is a
duality between them, which does not only manifest itself optically in the resulting
exhibitions, but is already inherent in the process of their creation: the idea for one
series actually originated during the creation of the other.
When Daniel Engelberg fills the mortised elements in the wooden boards for the
Donuts with a mixture of epoxy resin and colour, he uses small wooden rods to stir
each one. The rods, saturated with a single colour, land haphazardly on a heap as
waste. One day the artist realized that what accumulated incidentally and by itself,
has its own optical value. That was the inspiration for the work series Sticks. The
connection between them and the Donuts reveals the logic of Engelberg’s work: it
changes between adhering to a concept and letting go3. It is that which makes his
complete work shine.
Actually a radiance emanates from Engelberg’s works. In the description of art that is
mostly literally meant, in the works written about in this text, it is rather the outcome
of a deliberately used effect. Nearly all inner edges in Engelberg’s constructed
objects are painted in neon orange. Their lateral positioning serves to let the colour
shine into the inner region of the picture, which is usually blue or pastel, creating a
contrast. One colour shining into the other conveys the impression of the works
glowing from inside and achieves an incredible warmth. It demonstrates that Daniel
Engelberg is aware of what he is doing. Via his art he manages to illustrate what
colour – or rather the deliberate combination of different colours – can do. It is exactly
that which makes his works concrete in the best sense and places him with a number
of Concrete Artists who have preceded him.4 That in itself is an art and it is one which
is also beautiful. It is never banal, it has meaning and it can make happy. The artist?
The one contemplating the works? Ideally both.
3 Play and chance are also important principles in Concrete Art, so Daniel Engelberg, who sees both
in combination to perfection, is no exception among Concrete Artists.
Dr. Theres Rohde
Director at the Museum für Konkrete Kunst
4 In his series of paintings “Homage to the Square“ Josef Albers made it his task to make the effect of
neighbouring colours on each other perceivable with differently coloured squares constructed one
upon the other.
Translation by Patricia von Eicken
von Dr. phil Belinda Grace Gardner
In der Beschleuniger-Testhalle hat Daniel Engelberg eine schimmernde, zwischen Transparenz und Abgeschlossenheit changierende Gruppe vielschichtiger Bildobjekte aus MDF-Platten, Lack und Epoxidharz installiert. Mittels Fräsungen und speziellen Gusstechniken bearbeitet und auf silbrigem, im Raum vorgefundenen Wellblech platziert, entfalten die semi-skulpturalen Arbeiten des Künstlers eine spacig-futuristische Ästhetik, die grafische Strenge und aus der Ordnung brechende Strukturen vereint. Die Dramaturgie der modularen Bildelemente an der Wand fügt sich zu einem dynamischen Zusammenspiel leuchtender Farben und geometrischer Formen, die Assoziationen zu Dunkler Materie und wissenschaftlichen Forschungen wecken, die am Ort der Bildpräsentation des Künstlers tagtäglich praktiziert werden. Vektor- und Netzstrukturen, Akkumulationen von Teilchen und sanfte tonale Abstufungen evozieren technische Verfahrensmuster und Energieprozesse und bündeln in nuce die unermessliche Ausdehnung des großen kosmischen Bildes.